I have an 'application' (not an eclipse application, hence the noshutdown and ignoreApp arguments below) that runs in an equinox osgi container. It is a sort of a server and if doesn't get any incoming message it shuts down exactly after 30 seconds. It's definitely not the socket's fault, I've already checked it.
Also, if I start the app with the -console argument the framework doesn't shut down, but leaving it that way is not a good idea for production...
These are the standard args I use: